Being a weekend warrior as good for brain health as being regularily active

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-08-21 19:00

International

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Regular physical activity has been linked to better brain and mental health, but how about those people who only have time to smash out their exercise over the weekend? Well, new research from China says that the weekend warriors are doing just as much good for their brains as those exercising all week. The team looked into data on over 75,000 people's physical activity from health trackers, as well as the incidence of dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, depressive disorders and anxiety in the cohort. They say that the weekend warriors - people getting around or above 150 minutes a week of exercise and at least 50% of that occurring over one to two days - had similar lower risks of brain and mental health issues as those who would exercise over 150 minutes a week, but spread over many days.

Journal/
conference: Nature Aging

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China

Funder: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 72204071 to C.X. and no. 72342017 to Y.W.); Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. LY23G030005 to C.X.); Major Science and Technology Project of Public Health in Tianjin (grant no. 21ZXGWSY00090 to Y.W.); and Scientific Research Foundation for Scholars of HZNU (grant no. 4265C50221204119 to C.X.).

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